Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Rethinking The Community As Temple: Discourse And Spatial Practice In The Community Rule (1qs), Melissa P. Pula

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project is a spatial reading of the Community Rule (1QS) that examines how space is used as a response to the perceived defilement of the Jerusalem Temple and how it addresses the problems of atonement and priestly authority for a community without a physical temple. Edward Soja’s concept of Thirdspace—social space transformed by material and mental spaces—illuminates how temple, military, and judicial spaces order social and divine relationships for those who followed 1QS. In turn, this spatial practice creates a new place that enables the community to contest the Jerusalem Temple’s authority while legitimizing its own. While Edward Soja’s …

Imagining The Scandal Of The Cross With Graphic/Novel Reading, Elizabeth Rae Coody

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For countless adherents to the Christian tradition, the Cross functions as a symbol of divine power. For the earliest Christians, however, this overwhelmingly positive valuation of crosses would have been unintelligible. Living under Roman rule, their immediate understanding of crosses would have been as instruments of execution and thus symbols of the power and victory belonging to a foreign empire rather than to the Lord they worshipped. For them, the crucifixion was a traumatic event in which the Messiah died shamefully. It is for these reasons that the scandal of the Cross is a prominent theme in the New Testament, …

Finding Onesimus: Recovering The Story Of A First-Century Fugitive Slave, Ryan Lokkesmoe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an investigation into the experience of a first-century fugitive slave named Onesimus, who is known to us primarily through Paul’s letter to Philemon (Phlm) in the New Testament. Within this broader purpose, this project challenges a popular historical theory for Onesimus’ flight, the so-called Amicus Domini theory. This is the theory that Onesimus fled his master Philemon with the premeditated intention of seeking out the Apostle Paul as a peacemaker in a conflict Onesimus was having with Philemon. The Amicus Domini theory is accepted by many scholars, though rarely discussed in detail or examined critically.

The goal …

Condemnation, Death, And Justification: From What Is One Saved In Paul's Thought?, Mark E. Maxwell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Salvation requires that a person or group of people have a problem, a peril I am calling it, like disease, tyranny, eternal damnation, or the unbridled wrath of God. Paul's gospel promises salvation. What, exactly, is the peril from which one is saved in Paul's thought? The traditional response to this question is that believers are saved from the punishment of death, and from the wrath of God. The former is the legal consequence of Adam's transgression in Eden in the primordial past, and the latter is the legal consequence of a guilty verdict in a divine courtroom in the …